ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author presents a research of the little-studied novelist Kobayashi Takiji. While working on him over the years, the author thinks about the relationship between literature, history, and society, and expands focus to earlier and later eras, and to the left and the right. Alongside her childhood in Shanghai, Hayashi Kyoko's starting point is her experience of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. More than half a century later, Hayashi would visit Trinity, the site of the first nuclear experiments, a site directly connected to 9 August, and write 'From Trinity to Trinity' for the monthly literary magazine Gunzo in September 2000. After the accident at Fukushima, the Japanese government ordered the evacuation of residents within a twenty-kilometer radius of the reactors. The government's vehement claims immediately after the accident that 'radiation emission is not at a level where there is an immediate effect on health' meant exactly that kind of thing.
